In my day...

I'm feeling old lately.  Maybe its because I haven't slept in the past five years.  But I find myself saying stuff I never thought I would.

This weekend I took Grandma and Greg to run some errands.  Pretty much any time Grandma leaves the house, especially if she has Greg with her, she comes home with toys.  Which on one hand is nice and very generous. On the other hand, it leads my kid to expect a toy every time we leave the house.

I have attempted to explain that we don't buy toys just because we have left the house.  Unfortunately, now when we go shopping and he asks for a toy and I say no, he says, in his rather loud voice "ITS TOO EXPENSIVE, RIGHT??? WE DONT HAVE THAT MANY DOLLARS.  TOYS ARE EXPENSIVE AND WE CAN'T AFFORD IT."

I have no idea where he got this idea.  I have said, no, we can afford it, but I'm not buying it because you have plenty of toys already, but he persists in announcing to the world that we are poor. 

So we are out shopping this past weekend with Grandma, and Greg picks up a piece of junk toy that he neither needs nor really wants.  I say no.  He starts to pitch a fit.  As we are walking back to the car, I am delivering a stern lecture on appropriate behavior in public, and how in my day, I never got lots of toys, I played with a stick and cardboard boxes and plastic bottles tops (all true, btw, I have pictures to prove it---my mother made me a violin from a dowel, a curler and a Triscuit box) and didn't need lots of plastic crap from China to make me happy....

WTH??? Did that just come out of my mouth??  IN MY DAY??  I'm thirty-freaking-six, for pete's sake.  Next thing you know I'll be telling my kid that I walked uphill both ways to school in the snow, with barbed wire wrapped around my feet for traction, like my father told me. 

Other things my father told me that I find myself saying lately....Life isn't fair, fair is something you pay to ride the bus.  Greg and I have this conversation frequently, although I don't think he's quite grasped the finer points.

And "you've got to suffer if you want to sing the blues."  I spent my childhood pointing out I had no interest in singing the blues. 

Daddy-ism I have managed to avoid saying....I'm game, she said, so the Polock shot her.